But if the creationists could prove that life was created by a deity or whatever, why wouldn't that be a "natural" explination? What exactly is the difference between nature and super nature?
AFAICT, the only reason people talk about super-natural phenomena is as an excuse to believe in things that there is no rational reason to believe in.
Actually, 1 MB is 1,000,000 Bel. There's no universally accepted abbreviation for byte. Some people use B, some use b. If you want to avoid confusion, spell out the whole word.
A quick Google search does not show any Definate answers.
The first result I get is a mail from Branden which in turn links to a number of posts by Daniel Stone pretty much summing up the consensus AFAICT. You won't find any *definate* answer simply because Debian doesn't work that way. Normally, formal decisions aren't made in matters like these. Rather, the people doing the work decide by themselves. If there's some controversy it is discussed until some kind of consensus is made. Debian isn't a strict hierarchical organisation where people follow orders from above. It's a lot more organic than that, and sometimes that means that definite answers are impossible to get.
But yeah, things like this should be in the FAQ or perhaps the Wiki.
Not that I agree with Russ's opinions or in any way am sad that he won't be leading the OSI, but if you actually read what he wrote it's clear that he meant the title to be provocative, but not racist as in "black people are lazy because of their genetics".
Of course, it was still a stupid and insensitive title. As a public figure you always have to think about what you say and write and expect people to interpret things the wrong way.
Yes, in many cases it does make sense to mimic real-world interfaces, since they're familiar to the user and because they fit in naturally with the way users work. However, in many cases the real-world interfaces are the way they are because of constraints that don't exist in a GUI. E.g. forms are often crammed with boxes and text in order to fit everything on one piece of paper, but this layout might not be ideal for a computer program. There are a lot more things you can do with a GUI than what you can do with a static piece of paper and a pen.
Maybe. But if you read the interview where he called us all modern day communists, he explicitly mentions the patent system. I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret it the way RMS did. Bill Gates was kind of vague and ambigous, but that's what happens when you use confusing expressions like IP.
I haven't done any C/C++ for ages, but i do use vim, mostly for PHP these days. And it does add functions, variables etc that you define in the current file or that exist in files you include() to the completion list. I've never really investigated exactly how it works, so I don't know exactly how smart it is, or if it actually parses the code. I'm guessing it simply looks for keywords, but it adequate for me at least.
I'm sure Visual Assist is a fine tool that is very useful to you, but if you try to compare it with other tools, at least try to get familiar with them first.
I don't think the ebook will kill the novella (when/if the ebook becomes popular, that is), and new ways of distributing music won't kill the album. Both exist because of the constraints and capabilities of a certain technology, but thay also make sense independently of that.
However, digital media will probably create new ways of packaging music, that weren't practical during the vinyl/CD era. But the album will still exist.
At least for rock band (and such), it's a pretty natural way of working. You write material over a longer period of time and then you gather the band, select a number of songs to record and then you go into the recording studio and record them. Hopefully, when you're done you have a dozen or so recorded songs that are good enough to be released.
Of course, things are different for e.g. people doing electronical music, hip-hop etc. It's much more common for them to record a song once they've written it (for electronical music it's a very small step from writing a song to recording it). This means that they have a more or less continuous stream of basically finished recorded tracks.
Also, as recording equipment has gotten more affordable (mainly thanks to computers and other digital equipment), it's become more common for bands to record songs themselves, a few songs at a time -- instead of having to rent a studio (and usually a producer etc).
But anyway, I think bands will still be recording batches of songs, and each batch will reflect the mood, influences and experiences the band has gathered over a period of time etc. Basically what makes an album what it is.
Well, the comments from the editors is part of the concept of/. Deal with it or go someplace else./. has always been a site where Taco &c post stories they care about and add a few comments, misspellings and grammatical errors of their own. Then the herd gets to flame away. Sure, the editorial comments have gotten a lot less personal and less frequent over the years, but it's nice to see that they haven't disappered completely.
I, for one, give a fuck if Hemos needs to renew his subscription to The Economist.
The problem I see is output quality. I have tried several laptops' headphone jacks for sound quality,
Just buy a USB sound device, e.g. the iMic. You can get it for like $30, and since it's USB-Audio compatible, it should just plug-and-play (at least it did on my Debian system).
I'd be very interested if somebody can suggest an automated dynamic range equalizer that's linux compatible!!
There are various implementations of the Replay Gain standard (i.e. non-destructive gain adjustment based on psycoacoustic loudness).
bittorent will surely run up a large bandwidth bill though;-)
No it won't. Or, at least it will use less bandwidth than FTP or HTTP (assuming you have enough downloaders). That's kind of the whole point of Bittorrent, you know...
Well, you do know that Sourceforge was created by VA Linux (now known as VA Software)? And Freshmeat has always been a directory of software for *nix. There are zillions of sites that only list Windows software. There was a need for a site where you could find *nix software, and Freshmeat filled that gap.
And secondly the majority of Sourceforge users are Linux users
I'm not so sure about that. Certainly, SF is a site for open source-software, and a lot of OSS is *nix-centric (since, well, the most popular open source OSs are Unix-like). On the other hand, if you look at the most popular downloads at SF, IFAICS the most downloaded apps are either cross-platform or Windows only. The same is also true for the most active projects (but perhaps to a lesser extent).
And finally those Linux projects, being popular have an easy time finding someone to port to Windows, but a low key windows project has a hard time finding someone to port it to Linux since no one knows about it.
That doesn't explain why popular and well known projects such as Virtualdub and Filezilla haven't been ported. My guess is that it has more to do with the fact that *nix software is usually made to be portable from start (well, to some extent) and rely on free libraries and developer tools which often already have been ported to Windows.
most users do use apps that use the common key commands like cntrl (or command)-c, -v, -x, etc.
That's not my experience. I've seen lots of people who've used computers regularly for years but never use any keyboard shortcuts. Copy? That's either Edit->Copy or that button with two papers. Save? Click the floppy.
Pantents exist to encourage innovation by making research that wouldn't be profitable otherwise possible. Do software patents encourage innovation? Will software patents give us more software related inventions? I haven't seen any studies that indicate that. I have however seen studies that suggest the contrary, that software patents in fact inhibit research (e.g. thesetwo).
So, tell me again why we should introduce this costly, bureaucratic
and monopolistic process. Exactly how will it benifit the citizens of
the EU? Will it give us new, innovative software? Will it give us more jobs (apart from all the patent lawyers, that is)?
I'm talking about the scenario where package a uses icons from package b
What package does that? If package b includes some files that are commonly used by other packages, those files should be packaged separately in, say b-common. Debian has lots of *-common packages.
If it's just a few icons, another alternative would be to simply ask the person who packages a to include those icons in a (renamed or in another directory, so a doesn't conflict with b).
Slashdot Mirror
Have you tried making a bug report?
AFAICT, the only reason people talk about super-natural phenomena is as an excuse to believe in things that there is no rational reason to believe in.
Actually, 1 MB is 1,000,000 Bel. There's no universally accepted abbreviation for byte. Some people use B, some use b. If you want to avoid confusion, spell out the whole word.
But yeah, things like this should be in the FAQ or perhaps the Wiki.
Yeah, here's a list of prisoners/100,000 people in different countries.
The free unrar in Debian main can only handle older versions of RAR. Use the non-free (shareware) rar instead.
Of course, it was still a stupid and insensitive title. As a public figure you always have to think about what you say and write and expect people to interpret things the wrong way.
But what happens when you use Adam and Eve with Darwin?
Now the question is, if you don't have a gramophone, can you read the data with a scanner?
Yes, in many cases it does make sense to mimic real-world interfaces, since they're familiar to the user and because they fit in naturally with the way users work. However, in many cases the real-world interfaces are the way they are because of constraints that don't exist in a GUI. E.g. forms are often crammed with boxes and text in order to fit everything on one piece of paper, but this layout might not be ideal for a computer program. There are a lot more things you can do with a GUI than what you can do with a static piece of paper and a pen.
Maybe. But if you read the interview where he called us all modern day communists, he explicitly mentions the patent system. I don't think it's unreasonable to interpret it the way RMS did. Bill Gates was kind of vague and ambigous, but that's what happens when you use confusing expressions like IP.
I'm sure Visual Assist is a fine tool that is very useful to you, but if you try to compare it with other tools, at least try to get familiar with them first.
However, digital media will probably create new ways of packaging music, that weren't practical during the vinyl/CD era. But the album will still exist.
At least for rock band (and such), it's a pretty natural way of working. You write material over a longer period of time and then you gather the band, select a number of songs to record and then you go into the recording studio and record them. Hopefully, when you're done you have a dozen or so recorded songs that are good enough to be released.
Of course, things are different for e.g. people doing electronical music, hip-hop etc. It's much more common for them to record a song once they've written it (for electronical music it's a very small step from writing a song to recording it). This means that they have a more or less continuous stream of basically finished recorded tracks.
Also, as recording equipment has gotten more affordable (mainly thanks to computers and other digital equipment), it's become more common for bands to record songs themselves, a few songs at a time -- instead of having to rent a studio (and usually a producer etc).
But anyway, I think bands will still be recording batches of songs, and each batch will reflect the mood, influences and experiences the band has gathered over a period of time etc. Basically what makes an album what it is.
You haven't used the GIMP (or looked at a screenshot of it) for a very long time, have you?
Others that deserve to be mentioned are Live-CDs/Knoppix, Wiki and Ogg Vorbis.
I, for one, give a fuck if Hemos needs to renew his subscription to The Economist.
What problem is that? Installing software?
So, tell me again why we should introduce this costly, bureaucratic and monopolistic process. Exactly how will it benifit the citizens of the EU? Will it give us new, innovative software? Will it give us more jobs (apart from all the patent lawyers, that is)?
If it's just a few icons, another alternative would be to simply ask the person who packages a to include those icons in a (renamed or in another directory, so a doesn't conflict with b).